Industrial production rose 6.3 percent from a year earlier in August, the National Bureau of Statistics said Tuesday, compared with a median estimate of 6.2 percent in a Bloomberg survey of economist and 6 percent in July. Retail sales climbed 10.6 percent last month, while fixed-asset investment increased 8.1 percent in the first eight months of the year.

The reports add to other recent data that have helped shore up confidence in the worldâ��s second-largest economy, including better-than-expected trade and the official factory gauge unexpectedly rising to the highest level in almost two years. One challenge is that the property market, which has underpinned the recovery, has shown signs of cooling down after the government signaled that real estate prices may be unsustainably high.

“Economic activity has evidently stabilized in recent months, and gone are, for now, worries about a hard-landing,” Frederic Neumann, co-head of Asian economic research at HSBC Holdings Plc in Hong Kong, wrote in a note before the data. “But keep in mind that the improvement was bought by a hefty dose of fiscal easing, especially infrastructure, and easier financing for home purchases. The trick will be to get the private sector to pick up the baton: stimulus canâ��t carry growth forever.”

China should take steps to restrain bubble-like expansion in housing markets and tame excessive financial inflows into property, Ma Jun, chief economist of the Peopleâ��s Bank of Chinaâ��s research bureau, told China Business News in an interview published this week. The central bank has held its benchmark rate at a record low for almost a year.